People adhere to sheet music, not wanting to be embarrassed entertaining company

People would cry loudly for 8 measures

I wrote a novel called “The Unending Harmony of Loss”

The New York Time said: “Marchia captures the ennui of his generation. His characters show us how we live today.”

People felt distant from the new generation

So they called it bad names

And wrote sad novels about it

And then were put into old folks homes

I wrote an advertisement for Coca-Cola

The ad said “DRINK IT. DRINK IT. FUCKING DRINK IT.”

People felt afraid of the ad

They started drinking Coca-Cola

The executives realized they could get away with doing this

They translated it into Spanish and sent it overseas

They took over the world

They had lots of money

They still felt afraid of being alive

They called each other in panic at early hours of the morning feeling insane

Some of them preferred Pepsi

There was intense confusion and schism

People who liked Pepsi would stab people who liked Coca-Cola in their eyes

And say “PEPSI!”

Everyone felt out of control

Some people started to not care

It didn’t even matter at this point

Could you unstab people?

You could not

I wrote a love letter

It was dry and sarcastic

At a certain point we had both become sarcastic

It seemed only fair that we would both do it

Otherwise it would be cruel

“Stop shouting” one of us would say

“I wasn’t shouting I was being sarcastic”

“I was also being sarcastic”

It was terrible

It didn’t hurt

I never want it to end

–Joe Marchia

Joe is the author of a novel, This Is The Future. His work has been featured in numerous literary journals. His recent work can be seen in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, SpaceBar and Crab Fat Literary Magazine.